Digital Chumps
HomepageObserver was a fine game three-plus years ago, but this re-make is head and shoulders above the original thanks to an awesome presentation, three new side missions, and a price that’s hard to pass up when compared to many games being more than twice as expensive. While we all look forward to Bloober Team’s next one, The Medium, you can’t go wrong with Observer: System Redux if you’re looking for a captivating cyberpunk mystery thriller.
Yakuza: Like A Dragon is a rousing success. The timing is excellent, too. It’s the dawn of a new console generation and it’s an exciting time for this storied franchise to turn a new page. As far as launch games go, this is one of the best, for several reasons. It offers some presentation ‘wows,’ but even more importantly it offers a deep, long, compelling story with memorable moments and characters, with strong gameplay and lots to do. It’s built off of the success of the previous fifteen years of Yakuza, but Like A Dragon blazes its own path, too — you need not have played any of the previous games to fully enjoy this one, yet I appreciate that this game honors the past while forging its own future. PS5 owners have something great to look forward to in March, but if you’re lucky enough to have the new Xbox, this is a great game that is also very well priced right now at just $50.
Tesla Force is one of the few rogue-lite games I have ever played, and I also rarely play twin stick shooters. I found the experience a little chaffing at times, in how I had to restart a chapter of random stages after dying, but there is a lot of satisfaction derived from unlocking better and better weapons, abilities, and perks and laying waste to the monsters. Best played with a friend or three, Tesla Force is pretty cool and reasonably priced for the experience it offers overall.
I have had some friends lament some frustration over how monetized MK11 is, and I absolutely see where they’re coming from. It’s not a business practice I like to see because we’re used to games having a final, all inclusive edition released and we just don’t have that with MK11. Maybe we’ll see a Komplete Edition like there was with MK9. Regardless, you can’t really go wrong with MK11U if you’re looking for a superb fighting game on current or next-gen.
Foregone is a whirring pastiche of ideas that came to define the last decade of side-scrolling action games. There remains an artful satisfaction to cutting through hordes of exquisitely fashioned monsters across splendid vistas but, without a thought to call its own, Foregone's performance will be consigned to oblivion the moment its player puts down their controller. It's a beautiful, sterile wasteland.
The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos is a great tactical RPG from Artefacts Studio. It has everything you want from a tactical RPG, adds a sprinkle of difference with some of its design elements, and brings it all together with a solid bit of wacky humor and fun personalities.
Golden Force is a fun, retro, side-scrolling experience not for the faint of heart. Full of challenging battles and pixelated fun, this run-n-gun will keep you on your toes.
I would have liked to have seen shorter load times and a revised inventory management system so that players can more easily avoid spending so much time in their inventory, but these are things that could very well be addressed with patching. Those two gripes aside, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is an awesome game and a wonderful experience to sink into.
Moon's commentary on the nature of its hero, expressed not only through its narrative but also its entire suite of mechanics, is its toolbox for deconstructing the template of the JRPG. Learning it's a long-lost game from 1997, operating with the inescapable sentimentality and eccentricity of the modern indie scene, underscores how long it took the rest of the world to reach places Moon had already been. Even with its anachronisms, Moon is a surprising novelty.
Running around taking down the undead, racing through the streets, and mowing down creatures is honestly all you could ask.